Chapter 18. El Gato's Tower

Above all of Montecito, Miguel sat like a spider waiting for something to hit his web. The master bedroom was in the second story tower on the north end of the villa where Miguel sat perched on a folding chair with Alesandro bound and gagged on the floor. The house was sparsely furnished, as it was used for nothing more than a safe-house for extreme cases that required security. The room’s entrance had double-door security... he’d made a sally port of the stair case. A sally port is a term that comes from old Norman castles and modern prisons. It is a space with two doors... an entrance that had to be shut before the exit could be opened. The tower was anOld Spanish Revival style castle turret where a converted laundry chute, hidden behind a door in the cabinet, made for a good escape, should it be necessary, to the mud room in the back of the garage. Another wall had several security monitor screens that kept the property safely under surveillance.

The house was inauspicious. Little more than the tower could be seen above the ridge, chaparral foliage, and boulders, from the road below. West Mountain Drive was in the hills behind and above Montecito. To his neighbors, the safe-house might have seemed a curiosity because it was empty for long periods and then suddenly buzzing with activity a short time, but no one in these parts pried. It wasn’t so unusual for well-to-do South Americans, Arab Sheiks, or newly wealthy young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to keep houses in Montecito. Near empty homes caused little concern because, for so many, these mini-mansions were exclusive crash pads for the well-heeled staffed with house and grounds keepers; used only a few months, or weeks, of the year.  None of Miguel’s neighbors were ever invited to his hacienda... mi casa was definitely not yo casa. Those who were invited, or the nosey uninvited, weren’t friendly neighbors and rarely left upright.

Miguel learned to read at fourteen between running errands for the local heavies. At first it was El Gato Negro and other Mexican Graphic Novels. His life seemed to parallel most of the intrigue, betrayals, and isolation of El Gato’s story. He related to the hero in that he knew right from wrong... sought to live righteous but had to survive like El Gato Negro... the Black Cat. By the time he was sixteen he was reading the classics... Neruda and Lorca about the Spanish Civil War. He learned English from Hemingway because of the simple sentence structure.  He soon dove into the translated works of Sun Tsu and he learned some Japanese by the pictures and text (English and Japanese) reading the Japanese graphic novel version of the Book of Five Rings. He’d read the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and admired the warped trinity of Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castro, and Juan Perón. He wasn’t anti-Semite, a socialist, or fascist, but he dreamed of having the same absolute power and aspired to be as brutal in obtaining it.

Miguel regretted the way he hadn’t acted rationally and was preoccupied with his lapse of judgment. He’d tried to recoup his losses with these idiot gringos. Now he had something that would attract the attention of the FBI and probably the DEA. He’d played the big shot for the benefit of Yuri and Dimitri, but he knew he was a small-time player and that he might as well... oh what, quit? There was no quitting... that was never the option... turn State’s evidence... protective custody... snitch? He’d be rewarded with a shiv in prison regardless... left to bleed out on a prison floor. Miguel had completely underestimated the forces he’d unleashed by kidnapping Adrienne. He knew that the FBI would become involved, but he knew the capabilities of the Feds. He also knew of how inept they, and the local police, were in prosecuting a so-called War on Drugs; using law enforcement techniques dealing with the cartels. War is war, and the enemy in war is not a criminal to be prosecuted, but an enemy to be defeated. Thus, there was no need for him, like the FBI, the DEA, and the BATF, to spend what Miguel knew to be unnecessary resources in time and money preparing a case for prosecution. His plan was that Nick would surrender and his body would be found without a head somewhere and his case would be closed.

16:00: Miguel sat on his metal folding chair with Alesandro on the floor above the rest of the house. Miguel started speaking as though to the walls as he stared at the monitors, “Santa Barbara is a peculiar place, eh? Maquis,” He looked down at Alesandro and continued, “It can’t quite decide whether it is a small city or a big town. It’s a Jacuzzi where small time politicians, shysters, three-card-monte piranhas’, play around with rubber ducks.” He laughed, “While sharks… real Megalodons, swim patiently beneath their knees.” He gestured with his hands clasped together opening and closing like a shark’s. “Maquis, you know, just a few months ago the Sheriff’s Department’s training facility had been broken into. Ha, check it out... that over 40 tactical weapons had been liberated from a locked store-room, forty of ‘em. Most had no clips.” He waved a hand over towards the monitors, “No security cameras! A weapons storeroom and not one camera working! Some kid in I V, they say. No one suspected we had someone inside. You have to be kidding, eh? We sold them to him. We kept a few for ourselves, you know. He wanted to be a big shot and confessed when he was busted, he was declared the mastermind of the break-in.”

Alesandro feigned a laugh from behind the restriction of his taped mouth and wondered if he'd ever get to 'check it out'.

“Here, so impolite... let me take that tape off your face, Señor,” Miguel said, as he ripped the tape, hair and all from Alesandro.

“Gracias, señor.” Alesandro winced but didn’t let-on otherwise how much pain the ripping of tape caused, then asked, “Can I at least sit more comfortably in my last hours.”

“You are most perceptive, Maquis.” Miguel picked Alesandro up by the shoulders and set him down on the cot while noticing the man was very thin and light as a feather, “What makes you think you only have hours to live.”

“Please forgive me,” Alesandro said politely, “I know your job and also know that you must do what you must do.”

“We have lots in common, I found out about you, Alesandro Gotson Otxoa. You were some kind of bandito too.”

Alesandro had known, since he stood behind the barricades in Asturias, that every breath could be his last, and was not intimidated by those who held the threads of fear as though they were puppet masters, “That is what the Falangists called us.”

“Then you saw yourself as a freedom fighter...’ Miguel sneered, “a Maquisard.”

Alesandro didn’t answer. He’d been interrogated by the best. He wanted to see where this amateur would go with this line of inquiry.

As if to impress Alesandro, Miguel boasted, “Ah, yes... a Maquis. I came from the streets of Tijuana. You know, a Mestizo... an outcast like the Basque. Like you, si?”

“Yes,” Alesandro agreed, playing up to Miguel’s ego, “You have a cause too, I suppose. You look like you are more than a cartel pawn. I can see that from your bookshelf.”

“And you were like Che Guevara, weren’t you? I mean beret and all.”

“There is more to it than wearing a beret, Señor. A cause greater than our selves compelled us to action,” Alesandro saw an opening... like a salesman that puts a foot in the door, “I’ve seen more men committed to the action and power than I ever did see committed to a cause. Che Guevara was addicted to the bloodletting of the revolution and not The Revolution. Men like you are more honest about it.”

“Honest?”

“Yes, you are about making money and money is for accumulating power. You freely admit by the choices you make that you care about nothing beyond service to that goal,” Alesandro saw Miguel’s chest expand into pride.

“Ah, ha! You know I am self-taught. I learned to read these high-minded tomes from paperback books like these,” he growled intimidatingly as he picked up a graphic novel, El Gato Negro, from a bookshelf, “But, Alesandro, enough of this pseudo-academic palaver. We have a problem in the bodega.”

“Once you have Nick you can let her go. I don’t see a problem there.”

“And you, Alesandro, back in your day, once you have taken off the blindfold from one of your captives,” Miguel sneered, “back when you were the infamous Maquis of the Pyrenees, what would you have done?”

“It would make no difference to me.” Alesandro played his best hand. “The Pyrenees were our home where the borders melted between France and Spain... Like San Diego and Tijuana.... appearing and disappearing at will, but our faces were already known. When we took a hostage, it didn’t matter. They knew who we were, so we often let them go.”

Miguel didn’t laugh cynically but he did laugh, “Maybe I find you entertaining... yes, I do. But you know that below... in the wine cellar is the other problem.”

Alesandro's heart lept because he now knew where Adrienne was kept and that she was still alive.

"Say, Alesandro, I have heard of this woman Iniga. She was fucking you, si?"

"Stories, where did you hear of such a thing?"

"We have our sources. I've heard she was a nemesis of gangsters going back as far as the thirties in Spain who just happened to be a Maquisard like you, no?. I think she is the ghost of the legend sometimes we call Diana in Mexico, el Cazadora de Los Violadores, You know, Diana, the huntress of rapists. We know she has been busy when we find some unfortunate asshole strangled by garrote or with throats slit. Furthermore, I know you, Alesandro, was an associate... maybe even a lover of this ghost."

Alesandro answered carefully, "I've never heard of her." He was impressed that Iniga's power had such far reach as a legend that can cross an ocean all the way to Southern California via the superstitions of a primitive people of Mexico.

Miguel had a job to do and it didn’t matter whether or not this woman was real... it was the spirit of an avenger in the myth that frightened him."You mean, Diana, or Iniga... you are smart, you'll never tell. Your Adrienne is safe in my hands, just in case." 

He had more material concerns like, how to pull this off. His heart told him it would be a mortal sin for his soul, though only mortal to the bodyies of Adrienne and Alesandro, but regardless both would have to go... along with Nick.  He paced around the room restless. He decided to go down to take another look at his hostage... maybe the sight of her would fire up his imagination... if there was ever a time he needed to get creative, this was it. The F.B.I. and the D.E.A. didn’t worry him as much as what he feared of his Tijuana associates. The consequences of failing to rein in this Nick Baker was gnawing at his gut. The thought of his head being found at the feet of Benito Juarez in the Parque Guerrero, like one of his old mentors from the barrio, haunted his imagination. That was the implied promise that was made to him before he’d gone north to rendezvous with Nick Baker. To the Feds he might have been a heavy, but to his associates, he was an expendable asset if their operations were adversely affected by his exposure. He couldn’t bring in money for the franchise from prison and he would always be a risk... suspected of being an informant.

He had to check on Adrienne, so he left Alesandro alone in the tower. It's a mistake youth sometimes make about people of Alesandro’s age. They think of octogenarians as feeble, weak, and too dawdled to be creative. Granted, Alesandro was way past his prime, but never shy of laboring in the fields of Biarritz estate, he was still far from feeble. Not knowing when Miguel would return, Alesandro was careful to work on the duct tape on his wrists so as to loosen them enough, but not reveal that he’d done so. He was no Houdini, but he'd escaped so many of these situations in his maquis years that it was in his nature to persist in his efforts.

Miguel shouted as his feet hit the concrete floor of the basement, “¿Dónde está este mirado tuyo maricón?”

“No tengo ne idea. Va y viene.” She answered automatically.

“Good, you speak … Bien, que habla español. Eso lo hace fácil.”

“Eh… Only a little… Sólo un poco. ¿Francés o inglés, por favor?” she tried to cover her fluent Spanish. Mexican Spanish was different from the  Castilian Spanish she’d known since she was a child. In California; therefore, she picked up on its oddities, easily talking to her gardeners and the garbage collectors.

Miguel stood menacingly over her, but she was unmoved. Sweat beads on her forehead were from withdrawals and those held more fear for her than anything Miguel could inflict on her. She decided to make a bid to relieve the hunger, “What do you want of me?”

“Nothing... you have nothing besides your Nicky I want. You can’t tell me where to find that fucking husband of yours?”

She was aware that her life was in the balance and couldn’t offer him anything, "That asshole could be anywhere... if he’s in Santa Barbara at all.” She had to come up with something, “I do know where he stashes his cash.”

Miguel didn’t answer her offer. This was a problem. This whole hostage operation would fail if Nick had made his escape and left this puta to be killed. Her head wouldn’t solve anything with the bosses in Tee Jay. He guessed that his life wasn’t worth a peso regardless of how much cash Nick had stowed away. He wanted to ship this junky whore’s head along with her Nicky’s to Tee Jay and he might get a reprieve. But, he knew from bloody experience of a lifetime on the streets there, that it wasn’t likely unless he got back some creds by getting back a quarter million in cash.

Miguel’s phone buzzed on his belt. The ID showed an unfamiliar number. He didn’t answer it. If he’d known it was Nick, he still wouldn’t have. Make him sweat. He also held back out of superstition endemic to his mestizo DNA.

He gestured to the Ukrainian, “Follow me, Yuri.”

He led Yuri to a small closet shrine of Señora de las Sombras ("Lady of the Shadows"), or Santa Muerte, the patron saint of the cartels. Yuri shrank back at the gruesome sight of an actual human skeleton dressed in a hooded robe with candles and flowers like a Madonna, or saint something or other, he’d seen before as tourist in the churches of Sicily… not holy, as were the Icons of shrines in Kiev.

“What is this? Let me out of here,” Yuri backed from the door.

Miguel didn’t stop him. “Okay, get back down and watch the puta.”

He thought of Yuri as a godless commie, having no soul, a product of the old Soviet Union Army Spetsnaz (special purpose detachments) from the poppy fields fertilized by the blood of the mujahidin in Afghanistan. He knelt at the altar and lit a candle. The Lady of the Shadows had been his protector since he was a child. He was but eight years of age when his father had been detained by the INS in Los Angeles and his Western Union checks stopped coming. Yuri wasn’t afraid of death because he had no soul. Miguel feared death because he had a soul and respected it knowing it was always there waiting behind the next deal, the next betrayal, the next coupe; his soul destined to be greeted by the fires of hell.

Miguel worried that Nick Baker would not show up and that Miguel would have to do something about Adrienne... evoking the spirit of the Huntress. That is, if he hadn’t made that mistake already.